omen, with Amazonian strength, were
hauling from one shed a huge kettle, in which it was evidently meant to
try the fat from certain portions of the seal.

Caius held his horse still upon the edge of the ice, too well diverted
with the activity on the shore to leave it at once. Behind the animated
scene and the row of gray snow-thatched sheds, the shore rose white and
lonely. Except for the foot-tracks on the road by which they had come,
and the peak of the lighthouse within sight, it would have seemed that a
colony had suddenly sprung to life in an uninhabited Arctic region.

It was from this slope above the sheds that Caius now heard himself
hailed by loud shouting, and, looking up, he saw that O'Shea had come
there to overlook the scene below. Some women stood around him. Caius
supposed that Madame Le Maitre was there.

O'Shea made a trumpet of his hands and shouted that Caius must not take
his horse upon the ice that day, for the beast would be frightened and
do himself harm.

Caius was affronted. The horse was not his, truly, but he believed he
knew how to take care of it, yet, as it belonged to a woman, he could
not risk disobeying this uncivil prohibition. Although he was accustomed
to the rude authority which O'Shea assumed whenever he wished to be
disagreeable, Caius had only learned to take it with an outward
appearance of indifference--his mind within him always chafed; this time
the affront to his vanity was worse because he believed that Madame Le
Maitre had prompted, or certainly permitted, the insult. It did not
soothe him to think that, with a woman's nervousness, she might have
more regard for his safety than that of the horse. The brightness died
out of the beautiful day, and in a lofty mood of ill-used indifference
he assured himself that a gentleman could take little interest in such
barbarous sport as seal-hunting. At any rate, it would go on for many a
day. He certainly had not the slightest intention of dismounting at
O'Shea's command in order to go to the hunt.

Caius held his horse as quiet as he could for some ten minutes, feigning
an immense interest in the occupation of the women; then leisurely
curvetted about, and set his horse at a light trot along the ice close
by the shore.

He rode hastily past the only place where he could have ascended the
bank, and after that he had no means of going home until he had rounded
the island and returned by the lagoon. The distance up to the end was